User experience (UX) website designs are all about enhancing the satisfaction that website visitors get out of your website. When a website is working well it's firing on all cylinders in terms of accessibility, usability, and the sheer pleasure that your customers get from perusing around your website.

The reason that your customers love UX-designed websites—even if they don't know that your website is UX-designed, or even what UX stands for—is that these kinds of websites have been created with an ideal user in mind all the while. UX-designed sites start with a "first draft" process known as website wireframing followed by extensive user testing.

Personas and storyboards are also created to give web and app developers more of an idea about how users will make use of your website (or app) as they go about their day-to-day lives. The really interesting thing about all of this is that there's a lot of crossover between UX-designed websites and inbound marketing…right down to the terminology.

Inbound marketing, UX designs and buyer personas

Inbound marketing is the marketing approach of choice for cost-efficiently reaching out to customers. Three-forths of marketers around the world prioritize an inbound marketing approach and inbound marketing campaigns have far greater ROI than traditional forms of outbound marketing.

The unsung hero of inbound marketing, though, and the reason that it's so powerful as a marketing approach has a lot to do with the fact that it foregrounds the user experience and relies on informed buyer personas from the outset.

Buyer personas help with inbound marketing because they tell you how to market content more effectively to your prospects, customers, and even your ideal buyer.

Where do buyer personas come from?

In an inbound marketing context, buyer personas come from your own market research. You'll also learn more as you go along from feedback and surveys that customers provide your company in order to get more out of the relationship.

You might even have up to one or two dozen buyer personas created from market research, trends you've spotted that inform that ways leads like to take in your inbound marketing content, and responses from your own sales team on what works best for sales qualified leads.

Personas are also created for UX-designed websites in order to make the overall experience more seamless and pleasurable for your target audience. These personas can come from customer surveys, just like your inbound marketing buyer personas, but they'll generally be more heavily informed by user testing on the UX-designed website or app itself.

How creating personas improves inbound marketing.

The underlying aim of inbound marketing is to cost-efficiently increase your online reach and turn more prospects and leads into promoters of your company. This whole process is greatly facilitated by delivering customized content to a targeted group of people possibly before they're even aware of a problem.

Creating a lineup of buyer personas informed by market research and customer surveys can greatly facilitate the buyer's journey from the awareness to consideration to the decision phase of making a purchase from your company. The more that you tailor your content to research-driven buyer personas, the more targeted content that you can deliver right when your customers need it most.

In the same way that buyer personas help to facilitate the buyer's journey and turn strangers into promoters of your company, UX-designed websites and apps that make use of personas help your ideal customer to access and navigate your online content. This means that your target audience will be able to get what they want from your website...when they need it.

Resulting higher website usability and website satisfaction scores means that customer will stick around longer, check out more of your inbound marketing content, and be happier all-around with their interaction with your brand. It's hard to think of a better way to offer value to customers that simultaneously pays dividends for your business.

UX-designed Websites and Streamlined Inbound Marketing

Personas and a user-centric focus - as opposed to an emphasis on your company, brand or new products per se - create more satisfied customers over time. When customers browse a UX-designed website they get the feeling that your company is looking out for them.

UX-designed websites work hand-in-hand with inbound marketing in that customers can go right from an email marketing message, social media post or search engine result right to your UX-designed website without a hitch.

Direct Images Interactive is an inbound marketing agency specializing in high-impact video production and online graphic design. We are centrally located between Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose. Come see us at The Gate in San Leandro, a thriving tech-hub of innovators. What can we do for you?